Dr Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal, BA (Goldsmiths), MA (Birkbeck), PhD (Birkbeck)

Profile

My research focuses on creative labour, cultural industries and political economy. My work examines how techniques associated with performance and creative labour have migrated into the wider world of work and management practices. I completed my doctorate at Birkbeck, with the thesis ‘Serving the Self: authenticity, performance and emotional labour’, which used primary data gathered from British workplaces to expand and develop an understanding of the theatrical and performative influence in contemporary service and hospitality work.

My current projects include a co-edited volume in Routledge’s Research in the Creative and Cultural Industries series (forthcoming 2026). In 2024 I was named a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker, one of ten early-career researchers selected nationally, and my research has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4. Prior to joining Queen Mary I was an associate lecturer at Birkbeck, where I taught across Theatre, Liberal Arts and Management courses. As a playwright, I have worked with Old Vic New Voices and Kali Theatre and my work has been performed at the Old Red Lion, Brighton Fringe, RADA and VAULT festivals.

Research

Research Interests:

Research Interests

• Creative industries and creative labour
• Political economy of the performing arts
• Actor training, skills and employability
• Emotional labour and workplace performance
• British South Asian theatre and cultural heritage
• Culture, activism and social movements

Recent and On-Going Research

I am currently co-editing a volume, The Acting Industry: Performance, Work and Capitalism in Britain, forthcoming in 2026 in Routledge's Research in the Creative and Cultural Industries series and writing on a co-authored monograph on Commercial Performance.

My research centres on what I call the 'acting industry' — the conditions under which performer labour is produced, trained and commodified in Britain, and how its techniques have spread into the wider economy. My doctoral thesis, 'Serving the Self: Authenticity, Performance and Emotional Labour' (Birkbeck, 2022), used original ethnographic fieldwork

at hospitality chains to show how models of emotional management pioneered in actor training have shaped contemporary service work and management culture. This research has been published in Bloomsbury's History of Emotions series and the journal Platform. I am currently working on developing my thesis into a trade book for a general readership.

A parallel strand of my public engagement research focuses on British South Asian theatre and cultural heritage. In 2025 I was awarded a Queen Mary Centre for Public Engagement Participatory Research Grant to produce The Next Act, an eight-part podcast series documenting and mapping contemporary British South Asian theatre through oral history and industry research.

I am a co-founder of the Performance and Political Economy Research Group (www.pperesearch.com), which works to expand interdisciplinary research which connects theatre and performance to scholarship in other disciplines including business, work and employment. Together, we’re organised study days, symposia and published several collaborative publications – most notably ‘Marxist Keywords for Performance’ in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. This project aims to provide accessible definitions of key Marxist terms for performance students and scholars, and encourage the use and application of Marxism within the fields of performance, theatre and dance. In 2025 we ran a workshop with Equity, the performers' trade union, on the impact of AI on their members' working conditions, funded by a Queen Mary Policy Impact Fund award.

Publications

Books

(Forthcoming) The Acting Industry: Performance, Work, and Capitalism in Britain, ed. Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal et al. Routledge Research in the Creative and Cultural Industries series, Autumn 2026.

Journal Articles

(Forthcoming) ‘Dear England: Coalitions of National Failure’, Performance Research, Spring 2026.
(Forthcoming) ‘Keywords for Value and Culture: Ideology’, Blackwell-Pal et al, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, Spring 2026.
Blackwell-Pal et al, ‘Marxist Keywords for Performance’, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 36:1, December 2021.
‘Producing “The Joy of Pret”: Theatres of (Emotional) Labour in the Service Industry’, Platform, 14:1, 2020.

Book Chapters

(Forthcoming) ‘It’s Work, so Work it: Corporate Drama Training’, in The Acting Industry: Performance, Work, and Capitalism in Britain, ed. Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal et al. Routledge, Autumn 2026.
‘The “System” of Service: Emotional labour and the theatrical metaphor’, in Feelings and Work in Modern History, ed. Agnes Arnold-Forster and Alison Moulds. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.

Reviews

‘A Doll’s House Part 2’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, August 2022

Other publications

Love Island and emotional labour, Red Pepper, July 2023.
Blacklash: Lessons in South Asian Organising and Radicalism, The New Arab, August 2022.
Kanye’s Dark Twisted Presidential Fantasy, Jacobin, September 2020.
On The Line: An interview with Jamie Woodcock, Jacobin, December 2017.

Public Engagement

In 2024 I was selected as a BBC and AHRC ‘New Generation Thinker’. Since then, my research has been broadcast on BBC Radio, including:

BBC Radio 3, The Essay: Performance at Work, 3rd May 2024

BBC Radio 4, Free Thinking, 17th May 2024

The Next Act: British South Asian Playwrights, is an 8-part podcast series spotlighting the voices shaping the future of British South Asian theatre. Each episode centres on a conversation with a single playwright, examining their creative process alongside the political, personal, and artistic forces that inform their work. Hosted by Dr Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal (Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, QMUL), Shiroma Silva (BBC broadcaster and presenter), and Rukhsana Ahmad (playwright and founder of Kali Theatre), The Next Act brings together lively, thoughtful conversations that explore the present and future of British South Asian. From the first spark of an idea to the challenges of production, the series shines a light on the creative journeys of some of the most exciting new voices in the field. This project was funded by Queen Mary Centre for Public Engagement. The podcast and project can be found at: https://thenextact.co.uk/

Performance

The Poetry we Make

Produced by Flugelman Productions; 2017-2018: The Marlborough, Brighton (May 2017);

Rosemary Branch, London (June 2017); RADA Festival, London (July 2017); Old Red Lion,

London (July 2017); Library London (July 2017); VAULT Festival, London (February 2018)

Pebbles and Stones

Rehearsed reading at Tristan Bates Theatre; January 2016, as part of Kali Talkback